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1990 Ford Mustang - Good Work

Blown Fox GT

Dale Amy

October 29, 2013

Horse Sense: It's rare we see a heavily modified Fox on four-lug rims these days, but this factory setup is more than adequate for a car destined primarily for street and show use, though it does somewhat limit wheel and brake choices.

Kevin Good bought this '90 GT when he was 17 years old—more than a decade ago—and as you might have guessed, it didn't look anything like this at the time. It was Oxford White, but mostly stock, and in pretty decent shape. During the intervening years, Kevin has personalized his project a bit at a time, as funds and time permitted, but he knew when he started that his goal was to eventually get the 25th anniversary hatchback into a magazine. Mission accomplished.

Overall, the major rebuild process was spread out over about seven years, and Kevin had yet to get the GT's final tuning completely sorted out when our paths crossed at last June's Carlisle Ford Nationals. Then again, there's really no such thing as a "finished" Mustang, right?

Actually, this is Kevin's second go-round at modifying his Fox. For the first couple years, he got by with a straightforward bolt-on package consisting of some heads, a cam, and an upper/lower intake combo. Heck, he was only a teenager. In the meantime, however, he was saving funds toward his grander scheme, which began around 2004 with a full teardown of the Fox, from engine bay, to interior, to rearend, and everything in between.

Looking for more torque, research had convinced Kevin that 331 cubes was the magic displacement and that D.S.S. Racing in St. Charles, Illinois, was the place to get it. So he ordered up a D.S.S. Pro Bullet short-block with the company's GSX forged piston option configured for 8.5:1 compression. He slid in a Comp Cams hydraulic-roller bumpstick, and then topped the short-block off with a ported set of Edelbrock Performer RPM heads. All this was in prep for some good old boost.

This time, Kevin's research led him to ProCharger. So now, when the hood goes up, your eyes are immediately drawn to the sizable D-1SC centrifugal with its beefy mounting bracketry and wide cog drive belt, though the highly polished Holley SysteMax II intake isn't far behind in the eye-candy department. He opted to run it all via a MegaSquirt II EFI system, though he has yet to have it properly (and safely) dyno-tuned, and so doesn't as yet have any rear wheel numbers to quantify his efforts. That tuning appointment is imminent.

The body, in the meantime, was shipped off to Zambotti Collision (in Kevin's hometown of Kittanning, Pennsylvania) where they shaved the door handles, installed several Cervini's fiberglass components, and re-sprayed the hatchback in a hue similar to its original Oxford White. Credit for the rather striking custom airbrushing on the GT's flanks goes to Boyer Graphics.

The interior was last to be done, and is where Kevin went all out. He enlisted the aid of a friend who owns To The Limit Motorsports, and together, they totally gutted and reworked the cabin which, in factory form, had been upholstered in red. A custom six-point cage was fabricated and then the guys crafted the GT's custom console and door panels, and filled the cargo area with an angled, one-off housing for a serious collection of in-car entertainment hardware. We need to reiterate that Kevin's GT is among the Mustangs that received 25th Anniversary badging (he also owns a similar-vintage convertible and is seeking a 25th Anniversary notchback), so he was careful to order some of Kenwood's 25th Anniversary XXV audio components to go along with that whole quarter-century theme.

Even though the blown and stroked Fox still needs a safe calibration before he can test its prowess on the dyno or drag strip, Kevin's multi-year project has been gathering appreciation and awards at various Pennsylvania venues, including the Carlisle Ford Nationals.

Some of that appreciation, however, has come from unexpected places, as Kevin and his buddy, Kyle, discovered while out in the GT for an evening cruise.

"We came up to a DUI check, " explains Kevin. "So we pulled up and they checked my info and stickers on the car. Then one officer leaned in the window and said, ‘This is a nice car—rev it up, I wanna hear it.' So I revved it for him, then a couple other officers walked over to the car. One asked me what I had done to the motor … The officer then stood up and talked to one of the others, then leaned back down and said: ‘When you get on the other side of those cones, you stand on it. I wanna see what she can do.' I looked at him in disbelief at what he had just said to me. The other officer just grinned and said, ‘Just don't kill yourself.'

"So I started to pull forward, looking at my buddy, and he said, ‘Are you gonna do it?' I said, ‘You better believe it!' So I got past the cones, jumped on it, laid some rubber, and enjoyed that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. On the way back home, the synchronizers went out in the tranny, but I was so pumped from what had happened, I didn't care ..."